Explore the Collections

Philadelphia Museum of Art Handbook (2014 Edition)

Giovanni di Paolo appears to have had access to a copy of the first-hand accounts of the miracles of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in which witnesses vividly describe the terror of the shipwreck—the rolling waves, broken masts, and flying sails—and the radiant light emanating from the saint who came to save them. The artist, however, embellished the scene by adding the naked siren swimming in the foreground, enticing sailors to steer off course. The picture’s dreamlike quality made it an appropriate selection for the exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1936. Carl Brandon Strehlke, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014, p. 100.

Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections

One of many examples of fifteenth-century Italian painting in the John G. Johnson Collection, this panel was originally part of an altarpiece depicting Saint Nicholas of Tolentino and his miracles that was commissioned for a church in Montepulciano in southern Tuscany. Giovanni di Paolo may have had access to first-hand accounts of the miracles because the government of his hometown of Siena owned a copy of the testimony of witnesses to the events. The shipwreck episode offered fodder for the artist's bizarre imagination, as survivors vividly described the terror of the rolling waves, broken mast, flying sails, and radiant light emanating from the saint who came to save them. However, it was Giovanni di Paolo who added the naked siren swimming in the foreground, enticing sailors to steer off course. The picture's fantastic quality made it an appropriate selection for a group of "forerunners" in the exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1936. Carl Brandon Strehlke, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 164.

* Works in the collection are moved off view for many different reasons. Although gallery locations on the website are updated regularly, there is no guarantee that this object will be on display on the day of your visit.